


Hammer Horror Hypocrisy

by apiphile



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M, Torture, explanation-fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-09
Updated: 2010-03-09
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:22:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apiphile/pseuds/apiphile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place after 1.04 (Cyberwoman/The Problem With Lisa). How Jack gets Ianto back on track.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hammer Horror Hypocrisy

**Author's Note:**

> Written after conversation with [](http://derryderrydown.livejournal.com/profile)[**derryderrydown**](http://derryderrydown.livejournal.com/), as most of my fic seems to be. I am too lazy to beta, and it shows.

Night at Torchwood Three HQ, when no one was working late and Myfanwy had settled, was a little like sitting in the TARDIS, if Jack closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the systems, the gentle tug of the Rift's tides of energy on his bloodstream like the moon upon the seas. It was almost relaxing, sometimes even enough to let him sleep.

The gentle hum of the slumbering Hub was broken by the sound of rustlings from the kitchen.

Jack bounced up from his insouciant sprawl (just because there was no one there to see didn't mean he couldn't look damned sexy at all times, after all) with barely a sound and stalked like a shadow through the banks of computers until he reached the doorway.

A man in a black suit was in the kitchen, standing in front of the refrigeration unit's open door.

"You shouldn't be here," Jack said.

Ianto ignored him, his shoulders hunched as if expecting a blow to fall on them, and went on plucking gone-off food from the fridge into a black bin-liner.

"I told you, go home and wait 'til I've decided whether or not to fire you – "

"And do what?" Ianto's hands moved only within the shield radius of his back, as if to stretch his arms would break them, or render them vulnerable to a crushing weight. Jack thought about the sound of breaking bones, the discordant wail of pain, and blinked to clear his head of the all-too-clear images.

"I don't give a shit. And don't think that I believe for a _second_ that you're a suicide risk, Ianto Jones. You're a resourceful man – " Really resourceful. He'd shown Jack that he knew more about covert operations and alien technology than Jack had ever imagined. Why the _hell_ that couldn't have been employed for the benefit of Torchwood as a whole – who wasted all that energy on someone they couldn't bring back - _fuck_. " – Really resourceful," Jack said aloud. "You'd have found a way to kill yourself already, if you were going to do it. Apart from anything else, you still have access to the armoury." A fact Jack really ought to do something about.

Ianto straightened up – still bent in on himself, as though his stomach was the centre of a world of pain and only by protecting it could he hold himself together – and emptied the leftover pizza by the sink into his bin-bag. He said in a voice so quiet that Jack had to strain to hear it, "I couldn't give you that satisfaction."

Jack peered at Ianto's face as best he could – difficult, as the man managed to keep turning away from him without actually appearing to move, like an exceptionally French waiter in a very expensive restaurant who doesn't approve of one's presence – and caught a glimpse of red-rimmed, bright, _dry_ eyes.

"The things you've put them through – " Jack began angrily, and thought better of it. More flies with jam than vinegar, like Estelle always said. "Ianto. Look." He cleared his throat. "I know how you must – " he stopped again.

Ianto took a cloth from one of the cupboards and ran it under the hot tap, the open bin-bag between his knees, but did not dignify Jack's remark with a response.

"I know what it's like to lose someone you love," Jack said, leaning on the doorframe, "And – "

"No," Ianto said in the same flat quiet voice.

"No?"

"She was my entire life," he said, sounding as though he was reading lines from a script on a screen before his face and trying not to think of their content at all. "You don't know what that's like."

"I do."

"No, _Jack_," Ianto said, imbuing his name with such venom that Jack briefly wondered if he'd ever be able to hear it again without feeling a little like he'd just been slapped.

"You don't know that," Jack pointed out.

"You can walk and talk and breathe and _laugh_," Ianto said, his back very stiff, "and I've seen how you look at Gwen. Don't tell me you know what this feels like. You have no idea what it's like to love someone this much. To lose them like that."

"It gets better," Jack said, and he was assured by the steadiness and hope in his own voice. "It gets easier to bear. One day you'll wake up and – look, I can authorise self-administered Retcon. You won't remember Torchwood. You won't have to remember her."

"You're a monster," Ianto said with the same inflection as before.

Jack couldn't see his face. "What? I just – "

"A human being," Ianto said, "wouldn't want to forget." He tied a knot in the bag and apparently turned his attention to cleaning shelves in the nearest cupboard. "I love her," he said, and there was finally a wobble in his voice. Ianto rattled something in the sink. "I love&lt;/i&gt;d&lt;/i&gt; her. I can't forget that and I _won't_ forget that."

"You want to stay here?" Jack said. It wasn't really that much of a question.

"What else is there?"

"You want to stay here," Jack repeated, taking his hands from out of his pockets at last. "You have to understand what you put the rest of the team through, what you've done to them."

Ianto put the cloth down and finally faced Jack. His face was the same blank mask Jack had grown so used to seeing before they … before they knew about Lisa, and only the whiteness of his knuckles as he steadied himself on the edge of the sink betrayed any inner tension. "All right."

"What?"

"I said all right. You want to punish me," Ianto said as if Jack's persistent need for slightly vengeful justice was perfectly public knowledge rather than, as he had fondly imagined, a deep and very dark and very well-kept secret. "Fine. Do it."

Jack grabbed him by the back of the neck and shoved Ianto out of the kitchen; though a dead, leaden weight, he wasn't actually putting up any noteworthy resistance. Jack knew this tactic from _somewhere_, somewhere very close to him, but it wasn't quite clear in his memory.

He marched Ianto through the deserted Hub and down the stairs to the cells. It was a little like wrestling with jelly – Ianto made no direct moves to prevent his propulsion towards the holding cells, but none to really assist it either, and he seemed to weigh a fuck of a lot more than Jack had really anticipated.

When Ianto _was_ firmly locked in and strapped down into what remained of the cyber conversion unit (little more than a frame), his shirt cuffs rolled back and his face still as impassive and (Jack noted without really bothering himself) _pretty_ as a china doll's, he took a moment to calculate how long he had before the rest of the team returned. What he could achieve in that time.

Jack left Ianto strapped in and strode off, heading for his personal quarters. The hand-cranked electrical generator was antique and laughable as a piece of technology, but it seemed apposite and thanks to its state of degeneration and decay it was probably not capable of sending out shocks that could actually kill Ianto. Probably.

At present Jack was still too angry and – if he was honest with himself – disappointed to worry himself much over that "probably". He'd hoped – well, until _Gwen_ he'd deliberately only recruited the terminally single and unattached in an effort to secure their absolute loyalty to Torchwood and absolute secrecy. Suzie and Owen were, had been, both estranged from their families. From what he could find out about the family life of either, that was not surprising. Tosh was too asocial to object much to being separated from the rest of the world. He'd _thought_ Ianto was the same: dead parents, dead girlfriend. And he's been wrong, and Jack _hated_ being wrong.

So he seethed at Ianto – irresponsible idiot driven entirely by doomed love into making the kind of stupid mistake that anyone with half a brain would … and who did _that_ remind him of?

Jack shook all thoughts of Carys and the Doctor's hand out of his head with a guilty twitch and laid the generator to rest on the table beside and a little back from Ianto's restraints.

Ianto was gazing somewhere into the middle distance with an air of almost martyred resignation, his ridiculously blue eyes apparently scanning dust motes and – if Jack was any judge – probably taking in their every dimension. Jack thumped the generator meaningfully, hoping for a response, but none came; he removed the electrodes, and began unbuttoning Ianto's shirt.

There was a minute flinch at _this_.

_In other circumstances_, Jack thought as he popped the buttons open, _I'd compliment him on this shirt. It's fantastic. In other circumstances, I'd probably kiss him right about now. Why the hell did he have to be such a fucking idiot?_ All he said aloud was, "I hope you're paying attention. Wouldn't want you to miss anything."

"I'm always paying attention," Ianto said without inflection or hesitation. Jack examined his face: Ianto's eyes were half-lidded and unfocussed – either uninterested, or entranced.

"Are you, though?"

Jack kissed him, and _there_ was the reaction he was looking for. Unusually salty lips, whether from nervous sweat or hidden tears, but Jack wasn't thinking about that. Ianto's body went rigid in its restraints, poker-stiff in every muscle – but it didn't last. After the initial shock (as potent as any the generator might bestow, if less painful) Ianto simply became heavy again, once more occupying some leaden hinterland between co-operation and retaliation. His lips were loose but almost lifeless and once _again_ Jack remembered but did not quite _remember_ this tactic, this unwilling compliance used almost as a defence. It made him uncomfortable.

He slapped the electrodes on Ianto's bare chest (not especially muscular, skinny, or fat, with a medium dusting of sparse black hair in the centre and nipples as pink as garden flowers) and retreated to a less intimate distance. He couldn't be wholly sure, but this time it seemed that Ianto's eyes followed him.

"This was used on me," Jack said, patting the top of the generator, "more times than I can count, by someone who enjoyed it a great deal more than she should." He paused and let a slightly nostalgic grin steal over his face. "She enjoyed it so much I never bothered to point out that I kind of enjoyed it too." Jack raised his eyebrows. "I don't think _you_ will."

Ianto said nothing. Not a hair turned, not a finger on either of his hands twitched.

Jack put his hand to the crank on the generator's side and thought, _can I really do anything to him that will hurt him worse than losing her?_ He gave the crank a short twist, watching Ianto's face for some sign that he was bracing himself. Such measures never helped. _I have to try_, Jack thought wearily. _Maybe he'll just … go_.

And so he began cranking the generator like an air-raid siren. The smell came first, then the crackle, then the hum of the wires, and finally the yell.

They – Jack found himself thinking now of "them", not names of faces, not Ianto Jones who nearly killed off his entire team trying to save the woman he loved – always started the same way, "Nnnnn – " segueing into a howl, a sound which was _not_ animal, as some war memoir or other he'd read had stated. It was not animal but terribly, horribly human – hoarse and alien-sounding in places, but so very human to its core.

When he first began – when Jack stepped onto that blood-slippery path towards becoming the "go-to guy" for inflicting pain on sapient beings – he'd worn earplugs. They couldn't be gagged, because gags restricted the flow of the confession, but he could blot them out.

Later he'd opted simply to stop acknowledging the sapience of his subjects, and their screams ceased to chill him. Which was, come to think of it, about the time he'd been assigned to work with "John".

He released the crank and inspected Ianto from a distance. There were scorch marks on his chest and the smell of singed body hair hung in the air between them. Ianto's face twitched a little, and his eyes were wider now, his pupils large and dark, his breathing ragged. Jack had always been a little startled by how much the physical signs of pain resembled the marks of arousal. Startled, and later kind of amused.

"Do you understand now?" Jack asked, reaching down to adjust at arm's length one of the electrodes. "What you've put them through?"

"Do _you_?" Ianto asked. He was _trying_ to sound flat but there were streaks of pain in his voice. Jack knew those sensations and the crack and striations in the voice as intimately as he knew the shock and smack of resurrection. "What _you've_ done to us."

"And what would that be?" Jack asked, retreating back behind his table, hand poised over the generator's crank.

"You want to turn us into you," Ianto said with some difficulty. "You don't even remember what it's like to be human."

Jack pulled on the crank again. He watched Ianto bite the insides of his mouth in an attempt to contain the imminent scream, blood and foam flecking his lips, oozing from the corners of his mouth, to no avail. Jack more or less ignored the howl and instead concentrated on the strange contortions a human face expressing agony goes through - _Ianto's_ face – until he let the crank rattle and roll to a standstill once more.

"So I'm a monster?" Jack asked mildly as the panting, slightly smoking Ianto as he hung limp and apparently exhausted from the restraining straps, his shirt pulled open and his tie still draped incongruously over one shoulder, as though he was at the GP's surgery for a check up. "It's a shame you can't do anything to teach me about being human, Ianto Jones. Not with that credible impersonation of a robot that you've been doing."

"And this?" Ianto croaked. "What's this? Reprogramming?"

The crank was smooth in Jack's hand, and somehow inviting. No. Not _somehow_. "I guess so. It'd be a pity to waste your skills, but I can't use them right now. Not with your head like this."

Ianto's teeth were already clenched in the anticipation of pain – Jack could see the tension in his jaw – but he still managed to mutter, "Have you ever tried not _using_ people?"

Ignoring both the question and the memories of his own calculated limpness, intentional unwanted surrenders long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, Jack leaned on the crank but did not turn it. "This is going to take a long time," he said, after a pause. "And a lot more than this humble thing here."

"Where else am I going to go?" Ianto croaked, his throat working violently. Jack wondered for a moment if, unable to stomach doing it himself, Ianto was trying to goad _Jack_ into killing him. It seemed unlikely, but then it was also unlikely that anyone would willingly submit to … well, _torture_ … like this.

He pulled the crank around again.

* * *

 

"We're going on a field trip and you're coming along," Jack said, replacing the stopwatch in his pocket. He'd taking to timing, now, how long each act took to elicit a scream from Ianto. The times were getting longer, and the blank expressions blanker. He'd have to be careful. He wasn't about to risk losing Ianto's capacity for being a decent agent to his own excessive desire for vengeance, especially as much of the anger had since drained away.

"I'm not a field operative," Ianto observed, dried blood flecks still caught in the grooves between his teeth. Jack wondered if anyone besides him noticed that they were there.

"You are now," Jack said.

Seven hours later Torchwood Three stood and surveyed the valley.

"I had no idea being a field operative involved so many … fields," Ianto said under his breath. Jack snorted a brief burst of amusement before he could stop himself, and watched as Ianto made annotations to various sections of his Ordinance Survey map.

"I thought you were right-handed," Jack muttered.

"I am."

"You're writing with your left," Jack pointed out. He saw Gwen's head jerk round, ready to see what was going on, if Jack needed any help, and he gave her a brief thumbs-up.

"So I am," Ianto said without looking up. "I must have decided that being ambidextrous was more useful."

"Amazing what you can learn when you put your mind to it," Jack said, not entirely sarcastically.

At this Ianto looked up and almost, but not quite, smiled at him.

* * *

 

"You're easing up," Ianto observed, when Jack removed from his chest the piece of alien technology that Tosh was calling "the Martian Cattle Prod" and which Ianto probably had an even stupider name for, if his past record with naming things was anything to go by.

"I think you're getting used to it," Jack said, though from the blackness of Ianto's eyes and sound in his throat he wasn't so use that "off on" might not be more accurate than "used to". He withdrew the prod and traced the red marks it had left. They would fade – one of the delights of this device was the lack of permanent scarring it inflicted, as far as he was concerned. He was … _fond_, perhaps … of the unmarked expanse of Ianto's chest remaining that way: unmarked. "I think you're _enjoying_ it," he said, only half-mocking.

"_I_ think anything you do, I'll learn to enjoy," Ianto said, looking him woozily in the eye and speaking without even a trace of sarcasm.

Jack took his hand away, but in truth he wasn't all _that_ surprised. Hadn't he expected this? This, or something like it. It was a good deal more convenient for him than the way things _had_ been, after all.

"Let's see," Jack said, pulling the stopwatch out of his pocket, "just how much you mean that."

* * *

 

"Plenty of things you can do with a stop watch," Ianto said with one of Jack's more lascivious smiles on his lovely soft lips, and a clipboard clasped loosely between his hands. Jack tried not to look startled. Letting Ianto have the stopwatch - _that_ stopwatch – to time the resurrections had been something in the nature of a psychological experiment, and he'd been duly impressed that Ianto's expression had not flickered – not a single eye movement there in the autopsy room had betrayed any lurking emotion connection with the object.

He hadn't been expecting to be propositioned with it.

"Such as?" Jack tested, mirroring the smile that had dawn well been his in the first place anyway. The gentle hum of the cryogenic storage unit beside them threw up a thousand wordless suggestions in his mind: see if he has the same configuration of body hair on his arse as on his chest and count them all in ten minutes, how quickly can I get him undressed, how long can I keep him from coming while right on the precipice of letting fly?

"Isn't that usually up to you?" Ianto said, his fingers closed tightly around the metal casing of the stopwatch like a talisman. It had been a cheap purchase in 1931. Who knew what it was worth now.

Jack put his hand on the back of Ianto's neck, where he usually pinched and shoved, and stroked circles with his thumb and forefinger instead.

"Oh, I think I trust you to make your own choices now," Jack said, and he knew he was smirking and he didn't care.


End file.
